1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in internal combustion engines and, more particularly, to internal combustion engines of the rotary vee type.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional internal combustion engine, pistons reciprocate in cylinders formed in a stationary cylinder block and combustion within the cylinders is timed to cause the pistons to turn a crank shaft from which power is delivered from the engine. While engines of this type are the most common type of engine currently in use, it has been recognized that such engines are inherently subject to a problem that lowers the efficiency of the engine. In particular, the reciprocation of the piston involves a sequence of accelerations of each piston from rest followed by a deceleration of each piston to rest. The work that is done on the pistons during these accelerations and decelerations is not recovered so that the energy, provided by the fuel used in the engine, necessary to perform this work results in an overall loss of efficiency of the engine.
Because of this loss of efficiency in a conventional engine, other types of engines have been considered as possible candidates for replacing the conventional engine. One such type of engine is the rotary vee engine which includes two cylinder blocks mounted in a housing for rotation about intersecting axes that are angled toward one side of the engine. Cylinders are bored into each of the cylinder blocks from the end which faces the other cylinder block and the engine is further comprised of a plurality of pistons, angled in the same manner that the rotation axes of the cylinder blocks are angled, so that one portion of each piston can be extended into a cylinder in one cylinder block and another portion of the piston can be extended into a corresponding cylinder in the other cylinder block. Thus, as the cylinder blocks rotate, the pistons orbit about the rotation axes of the cylinder blocks to vary the free volumes of the cylinders in the cylinder blocks. That is, when a piston is on the side of the engine away from which the rotation axes of the cylinder blocks are angled, only a small part of each piston will extend into each of the cylinders, in the two cylinder blocks, in which the piston is mounted while major portions of each piston are disposed in the two cylinders in the two cylinder blocks when the piston is moved to a position at the side of the engine toward which the two rotation axes of the cylinder blocks are angled. Thus, compression and expansion of gases in the cylinders can take place with a continuous motion of both the cylinder blocks and the pistons to eliminate the loss of efficiency of a conventional engine that has been described above.
In practice, the rotary vee engine has not lived up to the expectations that inventors have had for such engines. Because of the angled disposition of the rotating cylinder blocks and the firing of each cylinder at one side of the cylinder block, forces which tend to spread the two cylinder blocks into a straight line; that is, out of the vee configuration, are exerted on the cylinder blocks and such forces result in drag between the pistons and cylinder blocks that interferes with the operation and efficiency of the engine. Because of this problem, rotary vee engines have not enjoyed much success despite the promise that they hold and, indeed, it has been found that an engine constructed in the rotary vee configuration will often not even operate because of these problems that are inherent in the rotary vee configuration.